“More than a shirt, feeding a passion for life”

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Recently KitAid were the match day sponsors at the Sutton Coldfield v Rainworth game and also featured in the programme.

Sutton Coldfield have kindly invited all future opponents to bring unwanted kit to the ground. This has also been extended to clubs that use the home ground to train on. Thanks to Helen for her work on this and we look forward to receiving kit in the future.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

On Saturday 24th November 2012 Pete ran from Ballysillan in Belfast to his house in Carrickfergus, a distance of 13.5 miles. As a result of this he has run over 1000 miles on the road this year, completing the Tonne Run challenge. The reason for the challenge is to try and raise money for the charity ‘Stand By Me’, helping those with next to nothing in Ethiopia. The target is £1000. If you fancy donating head on over to the following site.Every penny makes a difference.

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Saturday 24th Novemebr saw another boxing up session take place. It was really pleasing to end the year on a high note and 69 boxes left the building, destined for Gambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Romania and Ukraine.

This brings our total for 2012 to a massive 757 boxes, which amounts to approx 26,500 individual items. We are now up 196,500 items since KitAid started in 1998!

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Friday, 19 October 2012

Last Saturday was a great day for KitAid as we held our monthly boxing up session in the morning, quickly followed by a kit collection at Chesham Utd's Non League Day event.

Paul Canoville, the former Chelsea legend, dropped in to the boxing up to collect some more kit for his project in Dominica. We also had a lot of new helpers from the local Uni (of Herts) and 62 boxes were packed in record time. So far in 2012 we have sorted and sent out 686 boxes of kit, which is approximately 24,000 individual items. We are getting closer to our next big milestone of donating 200,000 items since KitAid began in 1998.

Thanks to Chesham Utd and to their fans who donated a bumper amount of kit at their match against Beford Town. CUFC have been a long time supporter and they were the first team to be made a KitAid Ambassador club. We wish them well in the Evo-stik Southern Premier League for the rest of the season.

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

KitAid Ambassador club Chesham Utd, from the Evo-Stik Southern Premier League, will be holding a kit collection at their Non League Day event on Sat 13 October. If you live within travelling distance of Chesham do pop along to the Meadow to support their activities and to see a good honest game of footy. England play on the Friday night so there will be no Premier League or Championship games to tempt you on the Saturday, and if you are not used to non-league football you will be pleasantly surprised at the standard. Kids are also invited to get coaching from 11am from the Arsenal Soccer School and season ticket holders from Premier League and Football League clubs will get into the game for half price.

We were delighted to meet up with former Chelsea legend, Paul Canoville recently, when he came in to collect some kit for a project he is involved with in Dominica.

Paul was the first black player to play for Chelsea in the early 1980's and at the time he suffered terrible racial abuse. He overcame this and became one of the pioneers in tackling racial abuse. He is now a motivational speaker working in schools and has also won awards for his brilliant book, Black and Blue. Do take a look at Paul's website www.paulcanoville.com

Keep up the good work Paul and we look forward to providing you with more kit in the future.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Many thanks to Watford FC and to all of their fans who generously donated shirts and kit at the club's open day event.

This is the 4th year running that we have been invited to attend and each year we seem to get more shirts and more interest. We were also pleased to meet Gianfranco Zola and the Watford legend, Lloyd Doyley. Julia Childs, KitAid Trustee, has already taken some of the shirts donated at the event to Lesotho and we expect to see photos and receive full feedback in the next few weeks. Look out for an article in a future club programme.

Many thanks to Alex Ashby from the Club and good luck to the Golden Boys for the coming season.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Congratulations to Marine FC from the Evo-Stik Northern Premier League on becoming the 5th club to join the prestigious Ambassador Club scheme. They join Chesham Utd, FC United of Manchester, Witton Albion and Stenhousemuir who have previously been invited to join the scheme.

Marine FC have really got behind KitAid, thanks to Community Officer Barry Lenton and Chairman Paul Leary, and they have collected over 6,000 items of kit for us to date. Barry is aiming to increase this to 10,000 as the new season kicks off.

We look forward to a long partnership with Marine and hope to hold a kit collection at a game during the 2012/13 season.

Monday, 30 July 2012

Stegota FC from Kampala staged a match last week which was a rematch of a derby game held thousands of miles away in Lincolnshire. We recently took some kits over to Kampala donated by Stamford FC and Lincoln United who both play in Evo-Stik Northern League.

Stegota set up a match with their fiercest rivals Kazo United, with Stegota playing as Stamford and Kazo playing as Lincoln. The match ended with a 3 - 1 vistory for Stegota/Stamford which gave them the bragging rights for the next few months until they play each other again in the Kampala league next season. The game was watched by an impressive 700 fans.

Derrick Williams and Lesley Giddens from KitAid attended the final day of the week long Ballysillan YFC footy camp in Belfast last Friday, and had a fantastic day. We have sponsored this brilliant event for the last few years and we are really proud to be involved in such a fantastic project.

Peter Thompson and his team do a great job in ensuring all 65 attendees have a great week and they are looked after throughout the footy camp by 35 volunteer coaches. Derrick took part in the infamous gauntlet run and somehow managed to get to the end of the course without being hit by an exocet shot! Togo won the World Cup and all of the boys had a great week. However, the project is not only about football and Peter and his team offer support to all of the boys and help them with a variety of topics throughout the year.

We are really proud to be a part of BYFC footy camp and already are looking forward to helping in 2013.

Monday, 16 July 2012

KitAid is delighted to announce the launch of our official charity partnership with the Hertfordshire FA charity partner for the new season 2012/13. We have worked closely with Herts FA over the years but it is great to become an official partner.

Derrick Williams commented, I am especially pleased as I think this may be one of the first charity partnerships created with a County FA, and it is definitely a first for us. It will give us access to a lot more clubs in the County and the beauty is, most of them are on our doorstep, which makes kit collections much simpler. We are looking forward to working with the team over the coming season and there are bound to be a lot of new opportunities that come our way. We would like to thank Nick Perchard and Karl Lingham for their help in brigning the partnership together.

Monday, 9 July 2012

Fantastic news from Zimbabwe - 5 of the boys from the Jesuit Mission that we’ve worked with for some years now have been chosen to represent Zimbabwe at U13 level! If that honour wasn’t enough, the team also visited Poland on a recent football tour, so these boys have done incredibly well. Hopefully they are now well on the way to playing at an international level!

We also sent a large donation of kit given to us by a local team - Harvesters FC from St Albans - just before the last boxing up session on 9 June and this week I received photos of it in use in Zimbabwe. Quite amazing how quickly the kit gets from Hatfield to a team thousands of miles away.

KitAid was honoured to be one of the chosen charities at the recent invitation tournament in memory of Charlie.

We would like to thank Jason and Nicole for including us in this special event and to the clubs who donated kit on the day. It was nice to be among friends in memory of lovely little boy and we are proud to be associated with this event.

Well done to Hemel Aces on winning the tournament and this year we have sent some of their kit to Rwanda. Other teams who have supported us involved on the day were Berkhamsted Raiders and Tring Tornadoes.

Charlie's memory will live on through the KitAid projects funded in Kenya, Zambia and Lesotho.

We're delighted to have developed new links with some professional or ex-professional footballers!

Paul Canoville used to play for Chelsea in the early 1980's and has an amazing life story. He went from being a pro footballer to a drug addict, living in a car , and has now turned his life around to become a motivational speaker in schools/prisons. He is involved with a football project in Dominica and will be coming to our boxing up session on 14th July.

The Sodje brothers have played for a number of clubs including Stevenage and Bury and are running a Foundation in Nigeria. Derrick met Paul Fairclough, the England non-league manager at Barry Lenton's award event last month who has been out in Nigeria, helping them with coaching. We will be sending over some boxes to Stephen Sodje to help with the project.

Chris Giles is a really interesting guy who has played for Yeovil, Crawley and Aldershot and is currently playing in the Conference for Salisbury City. He collected 1,000+ shirts from fans at all the clubs he had played for and we met up with him last Tuesday evening when he brought his campervan fully loaded with them all to Hatfield. Ian of Football Gambia also cam to the meeting as most of the shirts will end up at this project in the Gambia.

Friday, 15 June 2012

Stegota FC from Kampala are definitely the most enterprising bunch of guys KitAid has ever worked with!

You may remember the story where we sent them a batch of XXL Stoke City shirts with the shirt sponsor of "Britannia" printed on the front. The guys tracked down a company in Kampala called Britania (note different spelling) and they persuaded them to support the club as they were promoting their company name! As a result they received a very large donation of biscuits to sell at their games.The relationship between Stegota FC and Britania has now moved on and they have become the new shirt sponsor, which is fantastic news. Last week, Thomas Enright, KitAid Trustee, was visiting projects in Uganda and he met up with the Stegota team who presented KitAid with a special shirt. If you want to follow their progress in the Kampala First Division visit their website at http://www.stegotafc.com/

Well done Stegota, we admire your enterprise and we hope the new kit brings you good luck.

Thursday, 24 May 2012

Many congratulations to Barry Lenton for winning the National Game Awards fan of the year!

Barry has now been recognised for his incredible effort in collecting 6,000 shirts for KitAid. Paul Fairclough, England C (non-league) Manager also presented Barry with a framed certificate from Graham Taylor on behalf of KitAid.

Following the ceremony, we are now looking to work with Paul and the Sodje brothers who have set up a foundation in Nigeria.

Well done Barry from all at KitAid, an amazing achievement - keep up the fantastic work!

Wednesday, 9 May 2012

KitAid is delighted to have started a partnership with the Sacred Sports Foundation.

Sacred Sports Foundation was founded by Keith Alexander the ex-City manager who died in 2010. The foundation is now run by his brother Delroy Alexander and works to increase opportunity and social inclusion for Caribbean youth. On a recent trip to the UK, Delroy approached us to help source spare kit for their programmes in St Lucia.

Speaking about the SSF programmes in St Lucia Delroy pointed out that behind the glossy travel pictures there are challenges in the Caribbean similar to those in other less developed areas of the world

“Imagine waking up in paradise and watching a visitor splash on a costly bottle of sun tan lotion whilst you struggle to eke out a meagre living on less than $5 a day” said Delroy “But that is the reality for far too many of our youth”

“Several of our grass roots community programmes desperately require kit” he continued. “we utilise any kit donations effectively and really believe they can help change the lives of our youth”.

Great to hear from Kebby who has been working with Alive and Kicking Zambia, working hard to drive social change through sport.

He has recently distributed 5 balls to the 21 Alive and Kicking coaches, as well as 8 sets of jerseys to a number of teams: Malalo Queens, Malalo Under 14 , Medics, Lubengele, Star, Boca Jrs, Magoma and Crushtek.

Friday, 4 May 2012

It was great to hear from Eugene Murangwa yesterday who has recently travelled to Rwanda where he was able to distribute some kit. Players at the Dream Team Football Academy in Kicukiro - Kigali as well as the Gihisi Youth Football Centre in Southern Rwanda are the new owners of Kit that Eugene took over for us.

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Fantastic news from our friend Joe Arimoso in Zimbabwe at Socius, a Jesuit Mission that run support projects in Zimbabwe. One of the girls at Socius has now been selected to play for the Under 20 National Team! In yet more good news, 6 youngsters from some of the teams that Socius pass our kit on to have been selected to play for the Under 13 team due to go to Warsaw, Poland to play in the VW Junior Masters tournament!!

The following message from Joe really touched us all and is a massive motivation to ensure that our work continues for years to come: "On behalf of all teams who have benefited from KitAid, I would like to express our gratitude and to let you know that your help with kit has had direct impact on a number of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Now we understand you slogan, “Its not just a shirt”…its a little smile and a little window into the future."

Another hugely successful boxing up session took place last Saturday morning. It was great some new faces and some reappearances of familiar faces, so thanks and welcome to Jenny, Louisa, James and the FG crew.Altogether we sent out 93 boxes to Somalia, Gambia, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe and St Lucia. This brings the total sent out so far this year to 287 boxes, close to 11,500 items of kit.

Thanks very much to all involved in last October's Ricky Road Run, a road race held in Rickmansworth. We've just received a cheque totalling a massive £1297.45 which will be invaluable in continuing our quest to put smiles on faces around the world by sharing kit!

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Stoke City kit is recycled and brings life to Stegota FC, Kampala in Uganda. The team was delighted with the new kit and even used a tailor to adjust some of the shirts.

"I
was telling the members of the team, that now that they are wearing the same
kind of Jerseys adorned by the Premier League players they greatly admire, it
should motivate them to work hard and play for Liverpool or Stoke City someday", said Edwin, the coach.

Sunday, 1 January 2012

Many congratulations to Squadron Leader Neil Hope for being awarded an MBE for his charitable and community work. KitAid joined forces with the RAF's charity, Taking Football to Africa and Beyond and the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation in 2010 to donate and distribute thousands of football kits to children throughout the slum areas and orphanages in Nairobi and surrounding areas. A trip that we will never forget.

Neil fully deserves this accolade and we wish him every success with his continued commitment to enable some of the world's poorest people to play and enjoy football.Read the BBC Shropshire news page

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Welcome to KitAid's blog

Registered charity no. 1113968

This little boy in a tattered Liverpool shirt was the catalyst to KitAid in 1998. Following a trip to Tanzania with WaterAid by Derrick Williams, KitAid was formed and the charity has grown steadily over the years from sending one box to the tiny village in Tanzania to this year donating 100,000 football kits to children and adults in some of the poorest countries in the World.

Many of these kits have been loved by children and adults in the UK and are now being loved again by people, thousands of miles away. Bringing us together is the passion for football and big smiles on our faces.